Cationic surfactants are widely used in the production of cosmetics, in textile industry, in chemical analysis, and as flotation agents in wastewater treatment. Quaternary ammonium salts, in particular, cetyltrimethylammonium and cetylpyridinium halides are most commonly used. The determination of their low concentrations in natural, potable, and wastewater is an important problem because of the high environmental stability of these compounds [1].Modified potentiometric sensors were successfully used to individually determine 10 -6 to 10 -3 M alkylpyridinium chlorides [2]. Total cationic surfactants can also be determined by the extraction-fluorimetry using Eosin (analytical range is 10 -8 to 10 -6 M) [3] and extraction-spectrophotometry using Bromophenol Blue (analytical range is 10 -6 to 10 -5 M) [4]. These methods are based on the solvent extraction of the cationic surfactant-reagent ion associates with chloroform. The absolute preconcentration factor of two to five is insufficient for spectrophotometric determination of low concentrations of cationic surfactants.The use of micelle formation is promising for improving the analytical performance of the spectrophotometric procedures [5]. Earlier [6], we demonstrated the efficient extraction of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide by reversed micelles of Triton N-42 in decane (distribution coefficient is higher than 2 × 10 3 ). This made a 100-fold absolute preconcentration possible in one extraction stage. In this paper, the proposed version of micellar extraction is used for enhancing the possibilities of the spectrophotometric determination of cationic surfactants as ion associates.
EXPERIMENTAL
Reagents and solutions.Distilled water was used throughout. The concentration of the main substance in cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (Merck) was determined by potentiometric titration with 0.01 M sodium tetraphenylborate (Fluka) by the procedure described in [7]. The stock 2.50 × 10 -3 M solution of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide was prepared by dissolving a weighed portion of the reagent in water while heating in a water bath at 70 ° C; the intermediate and working solutions were prepared by diluting the stock solution before extraction. The solution of Bromophenol Blue (1.0 × 10 -3 M) was prepared the day the experiments were performed by dissolving 16.8 mg of the dye in 2 mL of 0.1 M NaOH followed by dilution with water to 25 mL. The stock ammonium sulfate buffer solution with pH 9.3 [1 M NH 3 + 1 M (NH 4 ) 2 SO 4 ] was prepared from chemically pure reagents. Citrate buffer solutions (pH 2.0 and 5.5) were prepared from chemically pure citric acid, NaOH, and 0.1 M HCl from the volumetric standard. The supporting electrolyte was 2 M NaCl of high-purity grade 6-4. The extractant was a 10 wt % solution of polyoxyethylene glycol nonylphenyl ether (four units, Sigma) in n -decane of reagent grade. Micellar solutions were decomposed with pharmaceutical chloroform that was washed with water and 0.1 M NaCl in an ammonium sulfate buffer solution (1 : 100) for 3 min, centrifuged, a...